Hurricane Missoula 2015

Monday morning I woke up and scrolled through Facebook, while I waited for the kids to get up. I read an update from our local new station the fire danger was going to increase significantly that evening. There was going to be high wind and lightening. I really didn't think much of it as the day had perfect weather.

I started getting dinner ready around 5. I took Charlotte out to the garden around 5:30 to check on our zucchini. Just as we were coming inside around 5:45, it started getting a little breezy. The kids and I ate dinner as usual. Perry arrived home around 6:00, and his first words to the kids were, "Okay guys, you've got to be quiet. I'm on hold with 911." Uhh....what? Since the wind started and continued to pick up, there was tree down at the end of our road that kept arching over the power line and would spark. 

At that point I started watching out our front window. Charlotte watched her bucket blow down the street a ways, and then a while later it was blowing the other direction. Eeek! "Come back bucket!" I however was watching our neighbor's house across the street. They had a few shingles loose and were being pulled off in the wind. 

After the wind died down around 7:00, Perry and I took a walk down the lane to see if there was any damage. I could see a big tree limb down in a backyard a few houses down from our backyard. As we walked closer to the end of the block, we saw a huge limb down on top of someone's garage. Their whole front yard was cover in limbs, as was their next door neighbor's. The end of the block, you could see and old tree uprooted next the corn field. And then the lightening started, so I speed-walked home. 

Since our neighbor wasn't home, Perry climbed up on his roof later that night to put tarp down, just in case it rained between then and when he got home. (Good thing because it rained this morning!)

While he was doing that, Kimberli called and told me what happened out at the golf course. They had to gather up all the golfers from their tournament and bring them into their itty-bitty club house. After the storm passed they had a family come in who had been out floating when the storm hit. The two little girls only had their swimming suit on and life jackets - the four of them took shelter under their raft during the storm. Eek! She said there were a couple billboards blown down and some tin laying around town as she drove though. The university area had a tree down in just about every street. 

I called Robin a little bit later, since I knew she was out of power. She watched a family gather up their trampoline that started blowing away. Took her back about 20 years when ours blew through our front window! She's been staying at my parent's house for a couple months and that area of town was hit pretty hard. Or at least the powerlines were. So far she's been without power for close to 48 hours. They don't expect to get power back on until close to tomorrow evening. There was close to 10 power lines down, some tangled in trees that had to be cleared first. Yuck!

We lost power around 10pm, and without power, we also lose our water. Thank you electric pump! I can go without one or the other, but no having both is a real drag. Especially when I'm not prepared for it. We were without power for about 16 hours, but without water for closer to 18 hours. 

To pass the time in the morning, and to keep the kids from opening and closing the fridge, I took them to go swimming at the hotel. They weren't excited at all...

 This girl LOVES the water!

 These kids are still pretty leery.

 Even without the slides on, they had plenty of fun.

A dare-devil she is! I let the kids swim for close to an hour before Perry showed up with lunch. Never has he ever had time to take a lunch break. Except for the day I'm not around to join him, so he came to us. Much better than the pb&j's I had packed for us! Before leaving, I filled up a jug of water to take home, just in case the power didn't come on soon. I'm glad I did!

I still have some yard clean up to do to. We have a few small branch scattered across the yard, and lots of leaves in the backyard that I need to mow up. With wind gusts up to 74mph, I'd expect a lot of leaves! That's stage 1 hurricane wind! I'm so glad there wasn't hurricane rain with it! Storms like that aren't very common here! Phew! So glad we all survived Hurricane Missoula!